Capacitive sensor interfaces are increasingly employed on various electronic devices including smartphones, appliances and vehicle instrument panels to replace traditional mechanical switches. In automotive applications, capacitive sensor interfaces may be employed to operate devices including powered windows, headlights, windshield wipers, moonroofs or sunroofs, interior lighting, radio information, infotainment devices and various other devices. Proximity switches, such as capacitive switches, employ one or more proximity sensors to generate a sense activation field and sense changes to the activation field indicative of user actuation of the switch, typically caused by a user's finger in close proximity or contact with the sensor. Capacitive switches are typically configured to detect user actuation of the switch based on comparison of the sense activation field to a threshold.
A capacitive switch typically does not provide a digital on/off input, but instead provides a sensor value dependent on various characteristics including the operator's finger size, posture and distance. As such, the logic to interpret the operator intent to operate one or more switches is generally more complex than a traditional mechanical switch. Due to the different operators and uses, it may be difficult to efficiently develop a capacitive sensor interface that is well suited for use by different operators. In the automotive application, the development of these types of proximity sensor interfaces typically includes environmental testing of the interfaces by a large pool of users in a customer clinic, which generally involves an expensive and time-consuming process. If changes such as changing tuning parameters in software need to be made to the sensor interfaces, the testing may have to be repeated. It would be desirable to provide for a development system that reduces the time and cost for testing and developing capacitive sensor interfaces, particular for use in the automotive environment.